Denmark has stated that the fate of Greenland is in the hands of the Greenlanders, which is as it should be. The US should propose to the Greenlanders a referendum: Greenland to join the US as a US Territory with an elected governor and legislature. US citizenship would be granted to all Greenlanders. Greenland would have a territorial representative in the House with voting rights on matters pertaining to Greenland. On passage of the referendum every native Greenlander, man, woman and child, residing in Greenland as of August 1, 2019 would receive tax free one million US dollars. Total cost would be approximately fifty eight billion dollars, chump, or Trump, change for the trillions of dollars of mineral and oil wealth in Greenland. After passage of the referendum the US would provide transportation to any Greenlanders who wished to leave to any nation on Earth willing to receive them. Since the Greenlanders would then be US citizens, they could freely relocate at any time to the US.

So how would it work? If each Greenlander got $1 million (or $250K or whatever number), does that mean if they own real estate, it is now owned by the feds? Do they start paying rent? Do they get to keep a homestead allotment or something? Asking for a friend.

The transfer would be of the country. Any private land would remain private land. The amount of settled land in Greenland is miniscule. I suspect that most of the Greenlanders would depart for more salubrious climes once they would have the money to make new lives for themselves. There are reasons why Greenland has the highest suicide rate in the world. It is simply not a pleasant place to live for many of the Greenlanders. Poverty, darkness for much of the year and extreme cold make a poor combination.

Greenland is of tremendous strategic importance for its rare earth minerals and its geographic location. There is a Chinese company there already mining minerals. So basically the Chinese military is there already.